


Once Upon A Time In the North

by goldandbeloved



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood Magic, F/M, Fairy Tales, First Time, Leather gloves, Lust, Magic, Multi, Occult, Other, Ritual Sex, Sabbat - Freeform, Sensuality, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:43:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7961137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldandbeloved/pseuds/goldandbeloved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange things still sometimes happen. In the North, with a red-haired princess and a man in black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon A Time In the North

**Author's Note:**

> I would be remiss if I did not thank my inspiration, AllTheDances' magnificent _First of My Kind_ and Snowgrouse's glorious _Because The World Belongs to the Devil_.
> 
> Thank you for the beauty and wild imagination; you are magnificent.

Rock and barrows and barren fields; in the North you are always among the dead. Some say that Cold, Death and Hunger are the true lords here, never mind what banners men carry or what sigils snap on pennants in the icy wind. The hot tides of summer may batter themselves at the gates, but leave only spatters of heat, the memory of sunlight. Here the bones of giants break through the soil. People who don’t know better say they are stones raised by the First Men.

What would your dreams be if you woke to bones jutting from the earth?

At night, they’ll tell you tales of spiders big as horses, creeping through the Long Night, burning cold with blue fire, tell how the high and low born alike bar their doors against them. The scratch of the legs on the door sounds like a whisper, someone loved and lost--and that is how you will find doors open, families frozen in place, fathers, mothers, maidens, children with spoons still half-raised to their lips, eyes wide and frozen in place like a stream. Death by cold is like going to sleep, gentle, soft, silent, warm at the end, not the waking frenzy of a fire, the slice of a sword, the snap of a noose.  
Insidious.  
Like kisses or poison, cold is a woman’s weapon.

I. 

There was a queen once, blue as balefire. The Wall was her throne and she sat there, finger-bones the combs in her hair, azure breasts full and round jeweled with nipples that never gave suck to any child. She shook her hips and rattled her girdle of dead men’s teeth, rocking, rocking, rocking.  
_Come and see._

One of them did, peeled off his furs and wool and leather, stripping himself from black to white. It is said she found him pleasing and they coupled like animals, shrieking in the night, shameless in their beauty, teeth stamping bloodless skin with crescent moons. It is said they sired beasts yet her skin never sagged, her eyes never dulled, her teats never fell lower, but instead she became more lustful, he became more hungered.  
She straddled him, his hands ivory stars on her body the sky.  
Their love-cries were wolves howling in the darkness.  
This was lust. This was sin.  
Men reminded her lover of vows and honor with black knives to the heart, to the eyes, to the belly and the stones. His blood froze like rubies on the Wall, he died with her name bubbling on his lips.  
His name was forgotten as he had forgotten everything for sapphire eyes, cold-burning kisses, arms to hold him close in the long night.  
Men scattered her in pieces under the frozen earth, knucklebones fallen from a cup, snake’s eyes, weighted her down with a cloak of stone.

Love is the death of duty.

In these lands, cold does strange things. It stops you in your tracks, makes you forget, strip yourself to the open sky and at the end, lulls like a mother, like the sweetest lover.

The men in this country never forgot this tender treachery.  
They mistrust the blue of a summer sky, the red of blood, the gold that no men take beyond the grave. Of course they covet, but the men say they do not that it means nothing to them.  
They wrap their women neck to ankles, like binding a broken arm, staunching a deep wound.

(Sellswords in every corner of the known world call it the axe wound. There is something strange in their laugh when they do.)

The men in this country never forgive.

This is a land where the cold seeps into your bones, binding itself inside to the very marrow. Sit by a hearth, fill your bed with dogs or women, soak yourself in the hottest of tubs and you’ll never be truly warm.  
Something in you will always shiver.

II.  
If you want something in the North, something no one else can provide there are ways.  
There is another lord in black. In the moonlight his eyes are green as wildfire, flecked gold with coin.He is not welcome unless you invite him in, leave him a gift.  
Something pleasing for him to notice.  
The most drastic is to leave a child wrapped in red at the crossroads.  
Child, of course, is a complex term; highborn girls and whores leave the remnants of a bloody visit with the midwife--the whores with a plea for enough money to hold them till they’re healed enough and can work again, highborn girls with a wish that no one will ever know, all of them wishing for a _rich man, a rich man._  
Some of them wrap gently, like swaddling a living babe. Others whisper their names to the Mother, in the hope that they’ll come back someday, when there’s a good man, coin, a warm place to sleep every night, a marriage and gown that hides a bit of belly.

The Mother should have listened before.

III.  
When the Seven and the Old Gods forget, the Lord in Black remembers.  
They are too far away to hear you, far in the heavens, far in the treetops.  
He’ll hear you wherever you are.  
Come the dawn, these gifts are always gone. Sometimes it is said the girls wake with gold chains, warm ones like sunlight.  
After that, some of them try their fortune in other lands. Once you’ve had a taste of warmth, nothing satisfies again.

IV.  
He likes wine, not dark beer, the kind you can make meals of, certainly not the curdled slurry that makes Wildlings shriek and caper in visions, fall to rutting in their drunken states. Beasts, though they’re just as Northern as those who name them otherwise.  
Wine, the most foreign of drinks here.  
Pale gold is preferred, like drops of sunlight that dance along the tongue, but rich reds will do nicely. Plate a meal on the finest dish you have, leave it at the crossroads with a rushlight and walk away, not looking back.  
(Those who have--at the very least they’re sunburnt. It’s a suspicious thing here in the land of iron skies. They’ll know you’ve been meddling with him, more aptly that he’s been meddling with you. There will be talk and you’ll have to leave for the South anyway, so make it easier on yourself, won’t you?)  
If you are desperate, the palest of ales, shimmering gold. Cut a chicken’s throat and let its blood spill.  
A bit of extravagance pleases him. Something very, very good.  
If you are short of time, wine and bloodied birth-bed rags, the simplest is swiftest.  
An iron blade, your palm dripping into the crossroads.  
After that, wait. He’ll come with his book, his quill, the scent of blood, ink, resins all around him. You’ll know how to letter your name then even if you never will again.  
There is another price. With kisses.  
Kisses are the finest gold.  
Women know these things best of all.

V.

Once upon a time, there was a girl.  
A princess.  
Her eyes were the blue of a summer sea, her skin as fair and pale as clouds that sharpen the blue of a Southron heaven, her hair as red as a birthing bed, a battle flag. She lived in a keep with warm floors  
(The Lord’s wife was foreign. The smallfolk whispered it as a concession, that warm feet meant a warm bed for his Lordship, a warm cunt instead of the chill of a fish’s belly.)  
and played the harp and high bells.  
She smelled of wildflowers. All princesses do.  
The princess sat watching and singing in her towers of grey stone while her trueborn and bastard siblings fought in the yards, muddied themselves, chased cats and stabbed at their meat with daggers. They knotted her golden embroidery floss to snarls because they didn’t know its worth.

The Lord and Lady knew worth.  
No sun shone upon the girl to keep her skin pale, she went out only under clouds, there’d never be a horseback ride sidesaddle or no, and she had a Southron nurse, a Septa, one who might as well be a sorceress. Certainly not an honest woodswife. She was their treasure and their poison all at once. Beauty does that. Like cattle-mongers, they knew she was a prize; like Northerners (or as Northern as some of them could be), she was their danger, their suspicion.

The smallfolk have a saying. “If a cat has kittens in the hearth, it doesn’t make them oatcakes.”

They clapped for her nameday, for the ringing of the bells, spoke of her sweetness, but it wasn’t the sweetness of an oatcake with fresh butter. Not at all, an eeriness, sharpness, strangeness no matter how sweet she was. Everyone said they loved her--but there was a worry. 

Her father once said to her lady mother. “You have four Northern children. “ tripped over his own tongue, “Five.” he said. “Five.” That’s how they remembered it, how he had said it always.

It’s not a surprise her favorite cakes were lemon, not honest oatcakes with blackberries. Something delicious, but not of this land, not of this cold world.

“Why don’t they like me?” she asked her Septa. Once.

“They love you sweetling, of course they do. Everyone loves you.” Her Septa shushed her and guided her hand into a perfect fan stitch.

The princess let her hand move over the taut cloth, sinking inside.

She knew the difference between loving and liking. 

At dinner she took an oatcake and chewed it dry, trying to taste what her brothers and sisters did. They scampered around the table like pups, her littlest sister leaping from lap to lap, shrieking for the Lord’s firstborn son to be her horse. Like mummers they lumbered around the hall and her father laughed in his rich brown suede surcoat.

(It had been soft against her cheek. Once.)

The princess fingered the splash of beads on her sleeves and felt something sting at her eyes. The cake stuck in her throat till she thought she’d choke on its dryness. She would be gracious, though gracious was a big word, a grand thing for such a small girl, something almost too heavy for her to hold.

Her littlest sister fell asleep in the lord’s arms, nibbling his surcoat's leather cords like a wild cub. 

The princess felt cold. Only cold.

At night she begged for stories to help her sleep.

“Tell me about the dances. Tell me about red stone and the silver mirrors in the Queen’s ballroom and the merchants with silk threads from Essos, the ones that look like jewels, like sunlight.” The Septa’s voice hummed low and sweet and the princess drowsed, then slept dreaming of brilliant rows of lords and ladies, the unfurling of colored skirts, colored silks warm on her hands. In her nest of furs, the girl’s hair shone like the wing of an exotic bird, red and sweet as a ripening fruit.

 

VI.

The princess grew; tall and graceful like a river heron, a birch tree, a braavo’s rapier. Like any girl, she was curious. She felt. She listened.

It was a shock that sent her shivering when she heard a song like it was the first time, though she had her whole life.

“Tell me.” she whispered to her Septa in the darkness. “Tell me about it. The sack. “  
(The word unfolded like a crimson cloak, a trail of blood.)  
The Septa blanched, tried to coax her away with tales of gallantry, markets, her favorite loves Florian and Jonquil, but she would have none of it.  
She wanted, you see.

Her Septa sighed and told her; the fury of King's Landing in flames, armies cutting like the swipe of a claw, and then open like an artery, a fatal wound, spilling cruel lusts, arms full of gold and gems, terrible cries  
(Tiny heads dashed against stones. Kings broken on sweet-forged steel. All the treasures heaped before the Sept, sapphires, emeralds big as duck eggs, pearls, so much gold, swimming like shining fishes in the creeks and rivers of blood.)

“He looked upon it. Knew it was good.” 

Her Septa shivered.

The princess felt a shiver too; neck to spine to fingers, sparkling terribly through her body, the strange places within, the rooms of the house not purchased, not yet enjoyed.

That night she lay awake before she slept, her eyes wide under her closed eyelids. Saw flames flickering over golden sword hilts, over the golden lionesses holding back a clawed and ragged velvet cloak  
Hands in black gloves glazed with blood,her pale body on that mantle as the kingless city burned, laid out like sapphires, ivory, silk  
(teeth)  
(voice warmer than any flame and the cold so deep inside her she thought she’d never warm, never wake.) 

She fell asleep, twisting and turning in her dreams.When she woke briefly, she felt a leather gloved hand on her ruby hair, stroking--tenderly, slowly as if she were a red kitten. She didn’t need her eyes open to know it was black. Soothingly, gently she drifted back to sleep in her nest of furs that never kept her quite warm enough.

VII.

Some who tell it say there was sickness in her, you see--she was never enough of the North, never enough of the rivers, as ill-begotten as a scaled wolf, a furred trout.  
They forget that there are other types of beasts entirely. 

In that year she was not herself; she’d cry and fuss for no reason,complain of a sore body, be possessed of melancholy, be petulant. Once the girl clawed at her sister’s face after the little one had splattered her with a blood orange, soiling her dress.  
Sudden silence and horror in the great hall, the little horse-faced wolfling too stunned to do anything but stare at the scrapings of her own skin and blood under her sister’s perfectly groomed claws.  
Then a howl as the little one ran to the safety of her father, to be cuddled, three scarlet stripes across her cheek. The princess stared, firmly silent as she mopped the juice from her dress, allowed herself to taken by the arm, dragged off to Septa and sweetsleep.  
“Woman’s trouble.” the lady of the hall murmured to her lord, both of them resolving to discuss it when the proper time came.  
In the haze of sweetsleep and sugared dreams of cakes melting on her tongue, something savory; biting down, her white teeth pierced a gobbet of red meat, warm, bloody and it was better than any cake ever could be as she devoured it in the golden sunlight. Hungry, she was hungry--

in the cold dark she licked her lips, tasting blood, slipped into sleep, black fingers smoothing circles over her scalp. Her sleep then was dreamless, deep.

VIII.

You’ll kneel.  
It’s what’s expected when you meet a lord.  
His warmth will spread over you, the pricklings of fear and sweetness mixed in your blood.  
When his black hand takes yours to lift you back to your feet, you will have never felt anything like it.  
You never will again.

IX.

The girl was desirous; she hid it under layers of skirts, acres of needlework but she was hungry for wisdom. She went looking in stories of Florian and Jonquil, banged her old dolls together to make them kiss, felt restlessness within her like a storm approaching.

One evening as the clouds gathered over the moon, she asked her lady mother: “What happens when a man puts his cloak over you?” Her mother’s eyes sparkled with avarice, gold-lust, then smoothed themselves back to maternal tenderness. Picking up a brush, she smoothed her daughter’s hair, made wide plaits and tiny ones as the girl waited, watching the transformation in the silvered glass, red ropes covering her head, like she was a ship ready for launch, primed for the open sea. The girl sighed in pleasure at a tightness, a tug in her hair she could press back at, make the feeling last.

“Everything in you changes forever.”

The girl wanted to ask how or why, but she did not have the words, So she bit her lip and suffered her mother’s kindness. At night she dreamed of cloaks of gold, red, black as night, covering her shoulders and swirling through her ivory skin, marbling her like the endpapers of a book, but rarer, dearer still.

“I’ll go somewhere warm. Won’t I, Mother?” she whispered, her last confidence.

 

X.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Never even think of it, the very possibility of a Northern lord’s cloak settling over her, the heavy scent of wet dog, made her sick as did the fear of it. Not a queen but only a bitch, gnawing on bones while in the summer sun others nibbled on rare meats marbled with sweet fat.  
Dowries. Estates. Holdings.  
Her mother’s eyes no longer tender but frenzied, but ledgers tallying her value like sheep and corn, like pigs and linens.  
She must have fine meat, jewels, cakes, pleasure.  
Sunlight. She must have sunlight.  
She _must._  
As the sun slipped below the horizon, the lord’s daughter stabbed the iron to her palm, blood spilling like wine on the earth of the crossroads.

 

XI.  
“What is it you wish?”  
She will not turn her head, but she can smell the blood, the walnut gall of ink, strange resins and smoke. Her hair stands up on the back of her neck, her body quivering as if resonating with another plucked string.  
_Echo._  
His gloved hand strokes her cheek and she feels a soft wetness, feels the taste of copper in her mouth. 

She wants to taste it with her tongue. But she can wait.

“What would you give me?” she countered, sweet and girlish yet canny as a whore, her hair gleaming in the lantern light.

“Do you wish for sunlight?” Silken, almost purring, that voice with its whisper of sharp teeth, of beauty. 

“The taste of lemons, oranges, sweet cakes all the fruit in the world?"

She's caught tight, one arm wrapped round her waist, gasping for breath but not wanting him to let go.

"Do you wish for knights in painted armor?”

Her body arches under his touch, her breath comes in ragged gasps. “Yes.”

“For silk dresses from Lys? For all the gold you could ever dream and more?

His hand on her neck, bent back, the whisper hot as a kiss.

“Do you wish to be Queen of this world?”

Her body burns like every summer is in her veins, her body, her body, feeling herself slip into it, inhabit all the rooms at last. It is all through her that she can feel his touch--and she’d go to all the Seven Hells again and again if he’ll touch her like that.

“Yes.” She groans “yes, yes, yes.”

 

XII.

As she holds the quill, his hand over hers, she feels herself high above rock, high above sea, watching the waves break below. She knows they are waves though this is the first time she has ever seen the sea.  
Between sea and sky she strips naked as her nameday. and like a gallant suitor, he tucks his cloak over her bare shoulders.  
She feels his eyes on her.  
Knows he finds it good.  
“Queen.” she thinks. “I am Queen of all the world.”  
And she is, with her pale skin, her blood-red hair, her power and her glory.  
She is terrible. And beautiful.  
A cloak changes you forever.

XIII.  
In her nakedness, her bridal finery, she flies to the dark of the wood, where though there is snow a fire blazes brighter than the sun, rich and tawny as the eye of a great cat. She drinks golden wine, cup after cup, laughing, her hair in elf-knots of red as she watches the feast because she was never allowed more than one cup, but not anymore, she’s drunk as a lord, as joyful as a whore.  
Then as she watches, the revelers change. Instead of dancing palm to palm, there is shredding of clothing, snarls, growling like mad beasts. In between the flames she sees the kitchen maids swiving with wolf-headed men, their heads thrown back in ecstasy, in the inner circle closer she lords and ladies in threes, fives and sevens, sees twin golden bodies writhing, this one, then that one on top, crowned with flames of emerald, glorious in their lust, their depravity, their beauty. Beasts and men and strange mixed chimerae, fierce copulation more real than any dance could be.  
Everything is permitted.  
The fire burns brighter than a looted city.  
And with no need for her bridal party to strip her, she lies back on the cloak, looks up into eyes infinitely clever, infinitely fierce, flecked gold and green.  
A predator's smile, all for her.  
( _I could just eat you up._ )  
“Oh yes.” she whispers “yes.”  
His kiss is fierce and punishing, makes her whimper in pleasure and fear. She bites at his lips and knows just where to put her legs after all, wrapping them tight around her lord’s hips as he thrusts into her, again and again  
and all her brethren sing _welcome, welcome, welcome home_  
and he fills her and for once she is completely warm  
his teeth clamp hard to her shoulder as he fucks her, his tender prey  
(his kiss, his lust the finest gold)  
Her cries rattle the heavens, shake the Wall.  
Once you are under a man’s cloak you are never the same.

When the princess wakes, she feels the heaviness of a golden crown upon her brow, but finds only a thick golden chain, just long enough to fit around her neck.  
In her room, in the glass, her twin combs out her mirror-hair till it’s smooth as blood-red ice. The gold rests on her neck, circling her like stars and her eyes are traitor’s blue.  
She loves them.  
She has never looked more beautiful.  
“Now.” she thinks. “Now it begins.”

That day a raven arrived from the capital.

***  
This is a story they tell in taverns, in castles on the Wall, to frighten each other, warn young girls what happens when they come too close to beasts.  
(women swinging like apples, _they lay with lions_ hung round their necks.)  
They said the princess beheld her lord father’s head on a golden platter, worked her wickedness on all with her sapphire eyes, lay in incestuous beds, reveled in her jewels and gold and was queen over all, lustful and terrifying in her appetites.  
Some say the lord cast her aside and she wandered lost in sorrow. Some say her father's blood broke the spell and she wept and now she's a Septa herself. Perhaps that one in the square.

All mothers say that if you are in the forest after dark, you’ll catch the scent of blood and ink, smoke, wildflowers and you’ll see them dancing, her pale skin, his black cloak, the shimmer of a golden lioness.  
Do not let them see you.  
One can only see so much and live.


End file.
